Ladd Keith

Ladd Keith, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning, Director of the Heat Resilience Initiative, and a faculty research associate at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona. His transdisciplinary research focuses on heat planning, policy, and governance to help increase the heat resilience of communities, regions, and nations across the world. He is the UA lead of the Southwest Urban Corridor Integrated Field Laboratory (SW-IFL) funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the co-lead of the Center for Heat Resilient Communities funded by the U.S. National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS), the heat research lead of the Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS) funded by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, co-investigator of the Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE) funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and co-investigator of the Southwest Center on Resilience for Climate Change and Health (SCORCH) funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He also serves on the Management Committee for the Global Heat Health Information Network (GHHIN), a World Health Organization and World Meteorological Organization joint initiative to protect global populations from the health risks of extreme heat. He has a Ph.D. in Arid Lands Resource Sciences and an M.S. in Planning from the University of Arizona.

Selected Interviews and Coverage

• NPR, On Point. “Is extreme heat an extreme disaster?” September 9, 2024.
• University of Arizona, University Communications. “We're at a 'heat-shed moment,' researcher Ladd Keith says of University's world-class heat expertise.” June 21, 2024.
• America Adapts: The Climate Change Podcast. “The Center for Heat Resilient Communities gets a NOAA Grant with Dr. Kelly Turner and Dr. Ladd Keith.” June 3, 2024.
• CNN. “Extreme heat is the deadliest natural disaster. FEMA can’t treat it like one.” August 8, 2023.
• BBC News. “Extreme heat around the world.” July 19, 2023.
• Associated Press. “Biden looks to provide relief from extreme heat as record high temperatures persist across the US.” July 27, 2023.
• The Hill. “Attorneys general call for federal protections against deadly workplace heat.” February 9, 2023.
• The Atlantic. “America Is Going to Have a ‘Heat Belt.’” August 16, 2022.
• Washington Post, “We built a fake metropolis to show how extreme heat could wreck cities.” August 11, 2022.
• The Christian Science Monitor, “How to cool cities, from heat officers to pavement sunscreen.” August 3, 2022.
• Washington Post, As temperatures rise, this research could help cities stay cool. July 8, 2022.

Journal Article Publications

• Ahn, Minwoo, Heidi E. Brown, and Ladd Keith. (2025). Rural heat health disparities: Evidence from the U.S. National Emergency Medical Services Information System (NEMSIS). The Journal of Climate Change and Health. 22(2025), 100432. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joclim.2025.100432
• Watkins, Lance, Heidi E. Brown, Ladd Keith, Erika Austhof, Hsini Lin Cox, Samuel N. Chambers, Joseph Tabor, Aaron Gettel, and Melissa Guardaro. (2024). A co-produced workflow for addressing inequities in cooling center access. Community Science. 3(4), e2023CSJ000038. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023CSJ000038
• Roy, Malini, Ladd Keith, Mona Arora, Fatima Luna, and Julie Robinson. (2024). Coproducing Opportunities to Advance Extreme Heat Resilience in Southern Arizona. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. 105(11), E2070-E2077. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-24-0216.1
• Amaripadath, Deepak, Alamin Molla, Ladd Keith, and David J. Sailor. (2024). Multi-criteria decision support framework for outdoor heat stress management in urban environments in changing climates. Sustainable Cities and Society. 114(1), 105799. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2024.105799
• Meerow, Sara and Ladd Keith. (2024). Cities at the Forefront of Emerging U.S. Heat Governance. One Earth. 7(8), 1330-1334. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2024.07.013
• Meerow, Sara, Ladd Keith, Malini Roy, and Shaylynn Trego. (2024). Plan evaluation for heat resilience: Complementary methods to comprehensively assess heat planning in Tempe and Tucson, Arizona. Environmental Research Letters. 19(8), 084050. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad5d05 
• Iuliano, Joseph E. and Ladd Keith. (2024). Shifting Gears: A case study of bicycle planning and decision-making in Tucson, Arizona. Active Travel Studies. 4(1). https://doi.org/10.16997/ats.1506
• Keith, Ladd, Sara Meerow, Lauren Jensen, Shaylynn Trego, Erika Schmidt, and Philip Berke. (2023). Evaluating urban heat mitigation across networks of plans. Journal of Planning Education and Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X231215780
• Trego, Shaylynn, Sara Meerow, and Ladd Keith. (2023). Heat planning in small and medium-sized cities: A Collaborative application of PIRS™ for Heat in Kent, WA, USA. Socio-Ecological Practice Research. (5)4, 409-422. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42532-023-00166-6
• Keith, Ladd, C.J. Gabbe, and Erika Schmidt. (2023). Urban Heat Governance: Examining the Role of Urban Planning. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning. 25(5), 642-662. https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2023.2244446
• Chambers, Samuel N., Heidi E. Brown, Ladd Keith, and Erika Austhof. (2023). Development of a Geographic Human Heat Balance Equation to Support Public Health Analyses: An Arizona Urban Sun Corridor application. Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment. 32(2023), 101009. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsase.2023.101009
• Chambers, Samuel N., Geoffrey A. Boyce, Daniel E. Martinez, Coen Bongers, and Ladd Keith. (2023). The contribution of physical exertion to heat-related illness and death in the Arizona borderlands. Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology. 46(2023), 100590. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sste.2023.100590
• Sami, Ida and Ladd Keith. (2023). How do streetcar transit users and streetcar decision-makers perceive heat risk? Journal of Public Transportation. 25(2023), 100045. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubtr.2023.100045
• Hughes, Halley B., David D. Breshears, Kimberly J. Cook, Ladd Keith, and Joseph R. Burger. (2023). Household energy use response to extreme heat evaluated with a biophysical model of temperature regulation: An Arizona case study. PLOS Climate. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000110
• Crisman, Jonathan Jae-An, Ladd Keith, Ida Sami, and Gregg M. Garfin. (2023) Designing Chill City: An interactive game supporting public learning about urban planning for extreme heat. The Journal of Environmental Education. 54(3), 225-239. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2023.2183173
• Iuliano, Joseph E. and Ladd Keith. (2022). Near Misses and Split Routes: Comparing Rider Behavior, Driver Interaction, and Route Choice for Cyclists. Journal of Transportation Safety & Security. 15(11), 1148-1171. https://doi.org/10.1080/19439962.2022.2155745
• Brown, Heidi E., Ladd Keith, Valerie Madera-Garcia*, Anissa Taylor, Nicholas M. Ramirez, and Irene Ogata. (2022). Greening up for mosquitoes: A comparison of green stormwater infrastructure in a semi-arid region. Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association. 38(2), 109-112. https://doi.org/10.2987/21-7055
• Meerow, Sara and Ladd Keith. (2022). Planning for extreme heat: A national survey of U.S. planners. Journal of the American Planning Association. 88(3), 319-334. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2021.1977682
• Keith, Ladd, Sara Meerow, David M. Hondula, V. Kelly Turner, and James C. Arnott. (2021). Deploy heat officers, policies and metrics. Nature. 598(7879), 29-31. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02677-2
• Keith, Ladd, Nicole Iroz-Elardo, Erika Austhof, Ida Sami, and Mona Arora. (2021). Extreme Heat at Outdoor COVID-19 Vaccination Sites. Journal of Climate Change and Health. 4(2021), 100043. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joclim.2021.100043
• Keith, Ladd, Sara Meerow, and Tess Wagner. (2020). Planning for extreme heat: A review. Journal of Extreme Events. 6(3&4), 2050003. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S2345737620500037
• Austhof, Erika, Vjollca Berisha, Ben McMahan, Gigi Owen, Ladd Keith, Matthew Roach, and Heidi E. Brown. (2020). Participation and Engagement of Public Health Stakeholders in Climate and Health Adaptation. Atmosphere, 11(3), 265. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11030265

Selected Other Publications

• Keith, Ladd, Sara Meerow, Philip Berke, Joseph DeAngelis, Lauren Jensen, Shaylynn Trego, Erika Schmidt, and Smith Stephanie. (2022). Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™ (PIRS™) for Heat: Spatially evaluating networks of plans to mitigate heat. (Version 1.0). American Planning Association.
• Keith, Ladd and Sara Meerow. (2022). Planning for Urban Heat Resilience. Planning Advisory Services (PAS) Report 600. American Planning Association.
• Keith, Ladd and Andrea K. Gerlak. (2021). There's no place in the US safe from the heat. The Hill. August 20, 2021.
• Keith, Ladd and Sara Meerow. (2021). Cities must plan for heat resilience now. Thomson Reuters Foundation. July 5, 2021.
• Shumake-Guillemot, Joy (Ed.). (2020). Protecting Health from Hot Weather during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Global Heat Health Information Network (GHHIN). (Contributing author)
• Meadow, Alison M., Sarah LeRoy, Jeremy Weiss, and Ladd Keith. (2018). Climate profile for the City of Flagstaff, Arizona. University of Arizona, Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS).